English

Describes air sealing of existing homes by sealants, weatherstripping, air-vapour barriers, and other techniques. Discusses principles of air exchange, moisture movement, air sealing, control of indoor air quality, and combustion air. Identifies procedures for assessing air sealing measures in individual houses. Describes materials for air sealing and their applications.

Experimental measurements have been conducted on eight houses in the Ottawa area to study the changes induced in house performance when loose-fill insulation is installed in walls. The report presents details on the induced changes in furnace performance, house airtightness, temperatures, humidity levels and position of the neutral pressure plane. ECAP (Enhanced Conservation Assistance Program) auditing procedures were applied to the houses, and the predicted fuel consumptions showed a considerable disagreement with actual values.

The Linford project involved the design, construction and monitoring of 8 low energy houses in Milton Keynes. The houses were insulated to current Danish Regulation standards and incorporated several passive solar features. Seven occupied and

Energy-related variables were monitored in six detached houses in Winnipeg, Manitoba, before and after the houses were retrofitted by re-insulating the exterior walls and ceiling, or walls only, with blown loose-fill glass-fibre or cellulose

Knowledge of the air change in dwellings under conditions of use is a prerequisite for the calculation of energy consumption and for evaluation of a dwelling's indoor climate. Air change was measured in a total of 25 occupied dwellings over a

Summarizes the main results of the seminar: 1 interdisciplinary collaboration is necessary, 2 a direct and intensive publicity campaign is needed to influence occupant behaviour, 3 an air change rate between 0.5 and 1 per hour (in relation to the total volume of the living quarters) should comply with normal requirements, 4 a method for measuring the airtightness or air change rate for individual buildings should be developed ready for application, 5 mechanical ventilation offers the best solution, 6 there exists a need for simple ventilation fittings which can be installed in existing buil

Recent work has demonstrated the existence of daily and seasonal cycles in attic moisture parameters. Over the course of a day, the attic air humidity may vary by a factor of three, and during the course of a winter there isstorage of perhaps

A method for following air movement within buildings, which uses several different tracer gases simultaneously, has been developed.

The principal environmental factors that affect human comfort are air temperature, mean radiant temperature, humidity and air speed. Presents asimplified model of thermal comfort based on the original work of Fanger, whorelated thermal comfort to total thermal stress on the body. The simplified solutions allow the calculations of predicted mean vote (PMV) and effective temperature which (in the comfort zone) are linear in the air temperature and mean radiant temperature, and quadratic in the dew point, and which can be calculated without any iteration.

To measure actual air infiltration in dwellings due to the house and inhabitants it is necessary to measure continuously for several days. This can be done by the constant concentration measuring method. The measurements show that in houses with a reasonably low air infiltration rate (0.2-0.5 h-1) theinhabitant has the major impact (up to 50-75%) on the total air infiltration rate. This must be taken into consideration when designing mechanical and natural ventilation systems.